Access on an Ethernet is governed by a device's Media Access Controller (MAC) which is a six-byte number that is unique to each Network Interface Card (NIC). Typical bridges and switches in a computer network learn which devices are on by learning the MAC addresses of devices attached to various ports in the network. By learning a topology map of a network, bridges and switches may quickly switch packets between communicating devices.
Currently, Ethernet communication is designed as a single stream of data. A single MAC, therefore, is used to process each individual data stream on each of the network ports. For example, if there are twenty four ports of Ethernet based data streams, then twenty four MACs process the traffic.
With twenty four MACs, an Ethernet switch is effectively processing each data stream in a parallel fashion. The parallel processing increases the complexity on the die area of each chip in an Ethernet switch. In addition to the number of MACs employed, several multiplexors are employed in addition to the internal bussing.
Even with existing switches, Ethernet die cost is expensive and very crucial. In addition, there are demands to work at higher levels of integration with twenty four ports being a starting point. Parallel processing of the data streams limits the increase in port processing that the market requires. Presently, the number of ports that may be processed by a single silicon chip is limited due to the available die area on the chip.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a way to process data on multiple ports using a low density device.